Category: Articles

Making a new year’s resolution or several resolutions can prove to be a difficult task. Sure, you could go with the easy and say, pledge to work out more and only eat lettuce, but where’s the practicality in that? This is one instance where go big or go home is highly ill advised.

The trick is: make attainable resolution goals and include descriptions on how to achieve them.

Some questions to help you brainstorm your own resolutions:

When did you feel guiltiest in the past? What could you resolve to change this year that will prevent an experience like this again?

Go through your Facebook friends. Who have you lost touch with? How can you change that? Make an effort!

When did you feel most like a failure in 2011? Is there a chance to turn it all around? Do it!

What are your serial bad habits? Do you procrastinate (hello 11 days later blog post), stress too much, smoke? These habits won’t die out in a day, so mark out the path you’ll need to take to obliterate them for good!

There’s also no reason you can’t make “standard” resolutions as well, but remember to create a plan on how you will see them through to completion!

What instrument have you always wanted to play? Sign up for lessons, now!

What new and exciting things have you always wanted to try? What’s stopping you? Go skydiving, take a surfing lesson or join a theater troupe! Plan it now: mark a date on your calendar and go!

Where have you always wanted to travel? Start making plans: get a coin jar going, purchase a map and hang it above your bed. Even if it’s impossible to travel in 2012, you can still make it you goal to get one step closer to your dream destination.

Don’t even start with that fall in love crap (unless of course you’ve already found “the one”), start with the basics: Plan to go on a date & ask them out!

Want to lose weight? Make reasonable goals: Eat healthier 5 days a week and allow yourself to enjoy the weekends, but maybe get in 30 min of exercise on Saturdays and Sundays. Don’t crash diet or purchase every extreme piece of fitness equipment when you know it will never work for you. Can’t stay motivated? Sign up for a class where someone else can kick your butt into shape! Make plans that work for you and your lifestyle.

Need more ideas?

Bucket List offers a ton of inspiring ideas. Make your own list and even help someone fulfill theirs!

Write down you goals, multiple times, and post them everywhere! Make them your computer wallpaper, pin them above your bed, on you mirror, on your dashboard, anyplace you will see them every day.

Motivate yourself. Write down why you want to accomplish your goals. Find pictures to motivate yourself and hang them up. Follow this twitter for daily motivational quotes. Only you know how to truly kick your butt into gear, so do it!

Pencil it in: Thanks to the internet and smartphones, remembering your goals is as easy as programming them into Google Calendar! Seriously, I love this application: you can hook it to your email and get a reminder whenever you have an event or task scheduled! Last semester, if I slept through my alarm, I always had a Google Calendar reminder to wake me up in time for class.

Make benchmarks: If your goal takes progress, set yourself a timeline to finish each step by. Give yourself a reward at every step, that way you’re more sure to stay on track.

Tell your friends, tell the world! This way, you feel more pressure to stick to it!

Track your progress! Work Awesome made a list of great online tools to track and stick to your goal. Choose the one that best works for you!

Remember

Don’t over-do it. If you have a hectic work/school schedule, don’t plan to travel the globe and quit smoking and make 300 new best friends; it isn’t rational.

Don’t hate yourself if you don’t accomplish your goals on time. Hate is not the goal. Remember why you set the goal and why you’re driven to succeed, even if it takes longer than you expected.